This volume in the Major Problems in American History series chronicles the history of Mexican-Americans from the pre-Colonial era through the present.

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in US history. This collection is designed for courses on Latina/o history. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

This book uses a micro-narrative structure to explore the assault on the collective memory of Mexican Americans in the Southwest United States from 2010–2016. These communities’ survival depends on their histories and identities, which are being quickly erased by gentrification and dispersal, neoliberalism and privatization. This issue is most apparent in the education system, where Mexican American students receive inferior educations and lack access to higher education. Avoiding the overly-theoretical macro-narrative, this book uses case studies and micro-narratives to suggest possible changes and actions to address this issue. It also explores how the erasure of Mexican Americans’ history and identity mirrors society as a whole.

Latinos in the U.S. are a major political, economic, and cultural force that is changing the national identity of this country. In fact, statistics show that by the year 2100, half of the U.S. population may be Latino. And two out of three of America's Latinos are Mexican. Mexicans are theoldest settlers of the United States and the nation's largest group of recent immigrant arrivals. Their population is increasing faster than that of all other Latino groups combined. The growing importance of this minority group - which will be felt strongly in twenty-first-century America - callsfor a fresh assessment of Mexican American history.The second edition of Crucible of Struggle: A History of Mexican Americans from the Colonial Period to the Present Era includes a new final Chapter 12: Latinos and the Challenges of the 21st Century. This chapter examines such issues as increased anti-immigrant activity after 2006, the crucial roleof Latinos in the election of Barack Obama, increased border enforcement and deportation in the wake of the U.S. Senate's failure to pass amnesty legislation, Latinos and private detention centers, the role of individual states in immigration reform, the surge of unaccompanied children from CentralAmerica, and more.

Except for Chapter 1 which comprises 3 Essays and Further reading, each chapter subdivides into Documents, Essays, and Further reading.

Newly revised and updated, Mexicanos tells the rich and vibrant story of Mexicans in the United States. Emerging from the ruins of Aztec civilization and from centuries of Spanish contact with indigenous people, Mexican culture followed the Spanish colonial frontier northward and put its distinctive mark on what became the southwestern United States. Shaped by their Indian and Spanish ancestors, deeply influenced by Catholicism, and tempered by an often difficult existence, Mexicans continue to play an important role in U.S. society, even as the dominant Anglo culture strives to assimilate them. Thorough and balanced, Mexicanos makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of the Mexican population of the United States—a growing minority who are a vital presence in 21st-century America.

An intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism. Drawing on rich narratives and primary source documents, Ortiz links racial segregation in the Southwest and the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century, to May 1, 2006, known as International Workers’ Day, when migrant laborers—Chicana/os, Afrocubanos, and immigrants from every continent on earth—united in resistance on the first “Day Without Immigrants.” As African American civil rights activists fought Jim Crow laws and Mexican labor organizers warred against the suffocating grip of capitalism, Black and Spanish-language newspapers, abolitionists, and Latin American revolutionaries coalesced around movements built between people from the United States and people from Central America and the Caribbean. In stark contrast to the resurgence of “America First” rhetoric, Black and Latinx intellectuals and organizers today have historically urged the United States to build bridges of solidarity with the nations of the Americas. Incisive and timely, this bottom-up history, told from the interconnected vantage points of Latinx and African Americans, reveals the radically different ways that people of the diaspora have addressed issues still plaguing the United States today, and it offers a way forward in the continued struggle for universal civil rights. 2018 Winner of the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award